9 Dec 2006 @ 23:33
Amazon Mechanical Turk is an interesting concept. The idea is that there are small tasks that might be needed for web projects, but which can't be done by a computer. "Human Intelligence Tasks", Amazon calls them. And what they've created is a market for such tasks. Which they use themselves, for example, to fine-tune keywords for books in their catalog. So, one can sign up, and one can do small tasks, for small amounts of money. Like that task there of answering a question like "Is 'gardening' a proper keyword for this book?" will go for 1 cent. That isn't much. But then again, if you move fast, you can make minimum wage that way.
But the interesting part is of course also seen from the buyer's angle. You can engage large numbers of people in adding value to some kind of data you have, or in collecting the data for you. That certainly opens up ideas for new kinds of businesses.
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